The proliferation of the physical size and storage capacity of portable electronic devices has encouraged innovation in user interface design practices. For example, a variety of input interfaces have been developed that can provide the user with a number of different mechanisms used to control the device operation or navigate the content stored therein. Within a family of devices that perform similar functions (such as a product line of portable media players) each family member can vary in size and storage capacity as well as the number and type of available user interfaces. For example different members of the iPod® family of portable media players manufactured by Apple Inc. of Cupertino Calif. can variously include a touch-screen, a click wheel, a physical button or any combination thereof. In some cases, however, a device may be so small that the device can only accommodate a limited user interface (such as a single physical button). However, even though the device itself may be small, the number and variety of content stored therein can be enormous. This large amount of stored content can require navigation techniques that cannot be easily implemented (if at all) by user inputs made available by the limited user interface found on these small form factor devices. In addition to providing a navigation tool, the limited user interface must also be able to provide the user with the ability to control the operation of the device thereby, greatly complicating the problem posed by the limited nature of the user input.
Thus, improved techniques for interpreting a user input by a small form factor electronic device having limited user input resources are desired.